Popular social networking websites include Facebook™, MySpace™, LinkedIn™, Orkut™, Bebo™, Yahoo! 360™, Hi5™, Friendster, Cyworld™, Windows Live Spaces™, etc. A common facet of social networking is the ability to display objects of common interest on an electronic map. For example, locations of members and meeting places may be displayed on a map. Social-networking related objects, displayed on a map, may be demarcated by symbols indicating points-of-interest (“POI”), way-points (“WP”), business locations, places of interest, members' residences, members' meeting places, members' current locations, members' places of employment, etc. (collectively referred to inhere as map-objects, or (“MO”)) For example, a user may perform a search for members' meeting places and the search results may be displayed as symbols on a map, corresponding to the geographic location of the meeting places in the result set of the search. In another common example, a user may request driving directions between social-networking related MOs, in response to which way-points may be displayed on the map, corresponding to geographic points along the plotted route of the driving direction.
Common mapping-related functionality includes “zoom in” and “zoom out”, which allows the user to see a smaller region at a greater level of detail, and a larger region in less detail, respectively. At present, one or more MOs to be displayed on a map may be outside an area of the map visible to the user (e.g. when the user zooms into an area of the map not including the MO.) The user often may not be able to discern the direction and distance to the MO which is outside the visible area of the map, without (1) panning the map in the general direction of the MO until the visible area of the map includes the MO, and/or (2) zooming out until the visible area of the map includes the MO, and/or (3) in the case of a menu or a hyperlinked-list item referencing the MO, selecting the reference to the MO from the menu/the hyperlinked list item, in response to which the map automatically zooms/pans to include the MO.